“If I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often.”
- Leonard Cohen
Another reference to touch on in the Six Miles East of Town tune is one that's in the verses that bookend the tune - “advertised on the party line.”
In our small Missouri community, we had three primary ways of getting local news and goings on. There was the paper, The Kirksville Daily Express; there was the TV station, KTVO Channel 3, and there was the AM radio station, KIRX 1450. On KIRX you got everything from auto accidents to obituaries, the weather, the farm report, sports, and Cardinal baseball games. There was a long-running program on the station called “Party Line” (Not to be confused with being on a phone party line - we had that too). Party Line was a forerunner to Craig's List only WAY more entertaining. It came on five days a week, I'm pretty sure, around 9:00 in the morning. It was probably an hour long. It was hosted for years by a man named Charlie Porter. If you had something you were trying to sell, or give away, even, or less commonly, something you were looking to obtain, you'd call Charlie up and you were “on the air" to make your pitch. “Charlie, I've got an old grill here I'm lookin' to get rid of…It's in pretty good shape…I reckon I'd take twenty dollars for it.” “Okay” Charlie would say, “What's your number?” And that's how it went, one after another. It was a yard sale on the airwaves. Charlie had to be pretty agile to keep it on the tracks because he'd get real characters and eccentrics on there. You just never knew what was coming.
Of course, as a kid I had no interest in any of this, but my mom usually had it on in the house so I absorbed it over the years. That's how Party Line ended up in the song.
When I think about the innocence and simplicity of that time and place compared to the world now, it's almost impossible to conceive that it actually existed. I count myself lucky that I got to live it.
Music birthdays: Vernon Reid (1958), Guitarist for Living Colour. Debbie Peterson (1961), Drummer in The Bangles. Tori Amos (1963), Singer-Songwriter, Pianist. Dua Lipa (1995), Singer, Songwriter, Actress.
RP